The third case of Covid-19 pandemic case in Rivers state is a hotel manager in Port Harcourt, the State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Princewill Chike told journalists yesterday.
Prof. Chike said the 61-year-old had attended to his employee who died last week of a mysterious sickness after his trip to Abuja, th federal capital territory.
He spoke in a news statement in Port Harcourt yedterday, following the latest outbreak in the state as announced by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Tuesday night.
The Commissioner said the patient has already been taken in for management and assured residents that the government is on top of the situtaion.
Speaking Prof. Chike said, “The first two cases that were diagnosed in the state has been discharged home and have reunited with their families.
“Yet we have continued to follow up travelers and person of interest as well a a several alerts and rumours reaching the state public h although eme gency operations centre.
“In line with our targeted case search, one of the five results receives yesterday night for Rivers state was positive for the virus.
“A 61-year old hotel manager who had attended to his boss, the owner of Minho Suites who returned from Abuja I’m February, 2020.
“The rapid respond team was notified of the sudden and mysterious death of the owner of Mingi hotel last week and decided to place all his contacts under watch.
“Once the testing guidelines were expanded , samples were collected from the hotel manager for Covid-19 testing and his result is the positive sample for COVID-19 in the state.”
The Commissioner noted that the patient has presently been admitted to the treatment centre for management while all those who had contact with him would be traced as efforts are equally on to decontaminate the hotel and other environment against the spread.
“Contact tracing has commenced and samples will be collected from his high risk contacts for RT-PCR analysis while risk communication and community engagement will continue unabated as usual.”he assured.
He assured that nothing would be spared in ensuring that no loop hold was left in curving the spread of the pandemic virus.